Adventures in La La Land

1. This week I read three books - and none of them were my usual fluff fiction. Go me! I forced myself to finish an Elisabeth Elliot book ( Joyful Surrender ) I started months ago. Her writing style is not my favorite and it took me a while to power through.  Then I read Ten Words to Live By  by Jen Wilkin. It's about the 10 commandments, and it wasn't my favorite either. I also read another YA book that I've heard good things about: S weet Home Alaska  by Carol Estby Dagg. It was good! Very clean and wholesome, which is hard to find these days!  2. For the past couple of weeks, I've been getting nonstop texts and emails from Grapids - a local heating/cooling company - telling me that I'm overdue for a furnace tune-up, and they're running a special right now. On Tuesday, I finally responded to their text, "I'm not interested. Please remove me from your contact list." So guess what happened on Wednesday? Our heat stopped working!! Grapids sabotaged

1. I got to go on a field trip with Levi this week to the museum/planetarium. I've gone on this trip with each of my kids when they were in first grade, so I've seen the planetarium show three times now. Haha. I usually ride the bus because, as I mentioned last week, I hate driving downtown. But I've been having stomach problems lately and Levi was having anxiety about puking on the bus in front of his friends (he tends to get carsick), so I drove separately. I successfully drove downtown, parked in a parking ramp, and  left downtown without getting lost, so I'm calling it a win! Haha. I was glad I drove separately because Levi was totally bored of the museum by noon. We stayed to eat lunch with his class, then went home for a while before we had to go pick up the girls!  2. I read a fun series of books this week: The City of Ember by Jeanne Duprau. I especially enjoyed the first one. While I don't usually love fantasy or sci-fi, I'm inexplicably drawn to dysto

1. I read a really good book this week: Habits of the Household by Justin Whitmel Earley. Click on the Amazon link for a more thorough synopsis, but basically it's about parenting intentionally, and creating rhythms in the home that reinforce spiritual truths. I loved it because it's so practical. He literally gives you some scripts (that can obviously be adapted for age appropriateness, etc.) of things to say to your kids during meals and bedtime and during family devotions. I borrowed the book from my cousin, so instead of filling it with underlines and highlights, I took pages of notes in a notebook. I wish I would've read it when my kids were younger, so I could've started creating some of these habits when they were younger. It also really convicted me again about the amount of screen time we indulge in. That seems to be a recurring theme in my life lately . . . almost like God is trying to teach me something.  2. We had another  snow day on Friday. Lena's fri